Seminar on crime against cultural heritage sites

On Wednesday I’ll be at the Swedish National Herritage boards (RAÄ) seminar on crime against cultural heritage sites. The seminar includes a brief on reported crime against cultural heritage sites 2000-2010, some examples on this and perhaps most interesting former Chief Prosecutor Sven Erik Alhem on how to to formulate police reports of suspected archaeological heritage crime, how they should be dealt with before, during and after the legal process and a discussion on this.

I hope for an interesting an informative seminar. From my point of view the most interesting part is the how to bridge the gap between the lawmen and us who work with cultural history – how to find a way where we understand each other, most often when I dealt with this there a big problem has been that neither the police or the prosecutor has knowledge of the cultural Heritage Act or what a ancient or historic monument are – or the process regarding understanding damages. In one part that is our fault – we fail to give them the right information; on the other hand they fail to make us understand what they need. I know that this differs in the country but a big part of it is that relatively few cases have been in our courts – and praxis is built via the courts. Perhaps this can be a good start.

The most important question according to me is how do we get the police and prosecutors to begin processing our police reports – they often lay there collecting dust until it’s barred.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to Testimony of the spade.

My name is Magnus Reuterdahl and I am a Swedish archaeologist and osteologist. Most posts are connected to my work or my interests in general; Scandinavian archaeology, osteology, cultural heritage, literature and so forth.

On the blog Aqua Vitae (in Swedish) and Testimony of a wine (in English) junkie I blog on wine.